Robot Serial Motoman Communications

Motoman MRC, MRC-II, and XRC robot controllers communicate with other devices over RS-232 serial ports using a complex, but highly robust, error checking protocol. When configured for Motoman serial communications, the In-Sight vision system understands this protocol and is able to respond to the commands it receives from the Motoman controller.

Note:
  • The Motoman controller must be configured to communicate in DCI mode. Communications initiated from an In-Sight vision system to a Motoman robot controller operating in Host mode are not currently supported.
  • Although Motoman controllers specify "None" for Flow Control, In-Sight vision systems require "Hardware" Flow Control (hardware handshaking) when communicating with a Motoman controller.
  • Only Motoman XRC controllers have been tested.
  • Because Serial Motoman is based on Native Mode, an In-Sight job may be developed and tested in Native Mode, then switched to Serial Motoman only when the actual robot controller is connected to the vision system. No other changes to the job are required.

  1. After selecting Serial Motoman as the Protocol, EasyBuilder will automatically search your job for any Location or Inspection Tools that define a fixture and generate a data string representing the fixture.

    Note: If you have not defined a fixture in your job, or you want to create a custom string or customize the format of your string, press the Custom Format... button, which will launch the FormatString dialog. From this dialog, you can add a different string, modify the strings and/or rearrange the order of the data that will be sent by selecting the data from the list and clicking either the Up or Down buttons to set your desired order. Once you have finalized your string modifications, press the OK button.
  2. In the Format Output String tab, any tool that generates a fixture will be listed in the Position Name drop-down. If your job only contains one tool that returns positional data, it will be selected by default. Otherwise, select the tool whose output string you want to send from the Position Name drop-down list. The formatted string will be displayed, as well as the number of characters in the string, for reference purposes.
  3. The Encoded Location field displays the CC + RRR data that the Motoman robot controller uses to retrieve data from the vision system.

  4. EasyBuilder automatically defaults to standard Motoman controller serial port settings. If your controller uses different settings, click the Serial Port Settings tab and configure the vision system to use the same serial port settings. The serial port settings will be saved to the vision system upon leaving the Communication step.

    Note:

    • The Serial Port Settings options vary per In-Sight model and applicable I/O module. If connected to a supported I/O module, first click the I/O Module button to open the I/O Module Configuration dialog and configure the I/O module.

    • In-Sight Micro 1000 series vision systems support serial communication only when connected to the CIO-MICRO or CIO-MICRO-CC I/O module.

    • There are two options for enabling serial communication for the In-Sight 70xx - 74xx series vision system: using the Breakout cable or using the CIO-MICRO or CIO-MICRO-CC I/O module. When connected to the Breakout cable (and there is no connection to an I/O module), the vision system allows one discrete input line and one discrete output line to be configured as Serial Receive and Serial Transmit, respectively.
    • If the In-Sight 70xx - 74xx series vision system is configured for use with the CIO-MICRO or CIO-MICRO-CC I/O module, the RS-232 TRANSMIT and RS-232 RECEIVE pins on the Power and I/O Breakout cable are disabled. Use the I/O module's RS-232 OUT port (DB9) to connect to a serial device.
    • In-Sight 8000 series vision systems only support serial communication when connected to the CIO-MICRO I/O module.

    • The CIO-WENET I/O module does not support serial communication.

  5. The Motoman robot controller initiates all data communication between itself and the vision system by sending In-Sight Native Mode commands. The GV[EncodedLocation] command will return the string configured in these steps, and should be used with all jobs developed in EasyBuilder.

Serial Motoman is an extension of In-Sight Native Mode communications. Motoman robot controllers only send numeric text over their RS-232 ports; standard In-Sight Native Mode commands cannot be sent. Instead, the Motoman controller must send the vision system a numeric representation of the Native Mode commands, with additional parameters appended as necessary.